Blog | A Hong Kong & China Photo Blog

Crossing the China-Mongolia border in Erlian

Having been granted your Mongolian visa, you are now free to head to the China-Mongolia border to cross from Erlian to Zamyn-Uud. The Chinese border crossing in Erlian opens at around 08:30 and closes around 18:00. It is no more than a ten minute drive from the centre of town. There are plenty of taxis buzzing about and it will only cost a few Yuan. Ask to go to the guómén (literally, nation door). The taxi will drop you on the road near to the rainbow arch at the border.

China wouldn’t be China without …

There are so many things about China that seem bizarre when compared to life back home that I could be sitting here all night listing them one by one. China wouldn’t be China without the interesting public toilet situation. China wouldn’t be China without instant noodles and Abibas sportswear. But in the few years I’ve spent travelling between the mainland and Hong Kong, there are a few things in particular that, as a Westerner, have struck me as so typically Chinese that I couldn’t imagine China being the same without them.

Ten (alternative) Scenes of West Lake

Revered by emperors and inspiring poets for centuries, Hangzhou has long been considered one of the most beautiful destinations in all of China. “Above there is heaven,” the Chinese say. “Below there is Hangzhou”. Marco Polo even went so far as to describe the city as “the most beautiful and magnificent in the world” when he visited at the end of the 13th century, and if the number of visitors that still flock here to witness this magnificence are anything to go by, its reputation has not waned one bit in the intervening years.

Monkey Mountain, Kam Shan Country Park

Monkey Mountain, known more formally as Kam Shan, is located in Kam Shan Country Park in the northern reaches of Kowloon. It is known as Monkey Mountain because as soon as you step off the bus upon arrival, you will most likely be attacked, eaten and have your remains dragged back to a mountaintop lair to be presented to the Monkey King that lives there. But this is what happens when people ignore the warnings not to feed the animals.

Bowrington Road Market, Wan Chai

Bowrington Road market in Hong Kong's Wan Chai district, gives a glimpse of a city that still manages to resist the modernising influences and development of the urban mess around it, offering a taste, smell, sight and sound of Hong Kong as it has been since its early days. Located just off Canal Road on the border between Causeway Bay and Wan Chai, it is one of many such wet markets across Hong Kong, each one similar in its devotion to freshness.

Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance

Performed for well over 100 years in the Tai Hang area of Causeway Bay, the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance has grown from a village ritual into one of the most popular events of Hong Kong’s mid-autumn festival celebrations. The event begins on the 14th night of the 8th month of the Chinese lunar calendar in September or early October, with the culmination of each night’s performance taking place on Wun Sha Street during the second half of the three hour dance. Before the dance begins, the incense is lit and stuck onto the dragon’s head, body and tail.

Ten Vietnamese street foods you have to try

There are two types of people in this world: those who see street food as a one way ticket to toilet town, and those - let’s say, more adventurous souls - who see it as the guiding principle of their entire travel experience. Indeed, there are even those who would go so far as to choose a destination based not upon the beauty of the beaches or what there is to see and do, but on the novelty of what they can put in their mouths when they get there.

What to do on Cheung Chau

12km south west of Hong Kong island and at only 2.5km in length, Cheung Chau is relatively small when compared to its more amply proportioned neighbours, but this has by no means left it floating in obscurity. The island has seen human settlement for longer than most other parts of the territory and has a potted history that includes pirates, illegal immigrants and more recently, a spate of holiday home suicides that earned it the family-friendly moniker Death Island. Not exactly a tag the Hong Kong tourist board will be killing themselves to promote.

What to read on the Trans-Siberian Railway

What up to seven days on a train if you’re planning on not stopping, time is something you won’t be finding yourself short of when on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Assuming you’ve exhausted all topics of conversation with your Mongolian or Russian carriagemates, given that you had your fill of passing birch trees after day one and can no longer imagine how you ever functioned in stationary society, you’ll likely find yourself faced with several crucial choices.

Crossing the road in Vietnam

As I noted in my previous post Saigon: Motorbike Capital of the World, crossing the road in Vietnam at first seems impossible. How to step willingly into an incessant wave of oncoming traffic and not succumb to the flood, is something that not only seems to defy all accepted laws of physics, but which, by general consensus, is also pretty near suicidal. It is something that cannot simply be seen to be believed; it must, by its own adrenalized nature, be experienced in all its near-death glory.

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Tai Shan: Capturing “The Look”

Posted on November 8, 2012 by strippedpixel / No comments

Maybe it didn’t actually seem as bad as those passing faces would suggest. Maybe, like child birth (or so they say), you forget about the pain and the hours of struggle once it’s over, and eventually look forward to doing it all over again. But as well as the nagging sense of disbelief at your own recent achievement, there’s also always just a twinge – just a tiny little crumb of an impulse – to stand on the steps as the crawlers crawl by, and, for want of less heartless phrase, laugh in their sweaty red faces. On my way down from Tai Shan, that’s essentially what I did.

Sunrise on Tai Shan

Posted on November 7, 2012 by strippedpixel / No comments

7000 steps and over five hours climbing. It had rained almost all the way up until we’d climbed too high for it to rain any more. For the rest of the way to the summit we were passing through a whiteout that still hadn’t shifted by the time I went to bed. It didn’t look good for the sunrise. But you pay you money and take your chance. And if you can see no further than your outstretched hand on the only day you’ve got to go up there, you’d better be praying to everything you can on your way to the top for a clear sky in the morning. I’d set my alarm for 04:15. Sunrise was at 05:20.

7000 steps to the top of Tai Shan

Posted on November 5, 2012 by strippedpixel / No comments

When it comes to mountains, they don’t come any grander or any more renowned in China, than Tai Shan. It is neither the tallest nor the most spectacular of China’s famous peaks, but having been visited by anyone who was ever anyone in Chinese history – from the first emperor Qin Shi Huang to Confucius and Mao Zedong – the mountain today, like Tiananmen Square in Beijing, is a place of pilgrimage for the Chinese people, a chance to connect with thousands of years of Chinese history and tread the same steps as those nation builders that came before them.

His ‘n’ hers: street fashion China style

Posted on October 24, 2012 by strippedpixel / No comments

Have you ever noticed, that when you start to notice something, you can help but notice the thing you noticed with increasing regularity? Like the time I found out that Volvos always drive with their headlights switched on. At first I didn’t believe it. But after I noticed one and then another of these Swedish behemoths happily going about with their lights all bright and shiny, it was soon as if every second car I saw became a Volvo I was seeing them so often.

Qingdao: beaches, beer and more besides

Posted on October 23, 2012 by strippedpixel / No comments

Beer or beaches? Hear the word Qingdao and the thought of one or the other will no doubt be the first that springs to mind. But Qingdao’s trump cards are not the only cards it holds. Regarded by many as one of China’s most beautiful destinations, Qingdao was named the country’s most livable city in 2011, and with an eye to future development to match the legacy of its colonial past, it seems unlikely the city will want to relinquish that honour any time soon.

Close encounters of the sexual assault kind

Posted on October 16, 2012 by strippedpixel / No comments

I’d walked down to the river as I’d done on my first night in Suzhou. Again there was the dancing, the kids on rollerblades, the breeze and general gaiety. I’d spent another day exploring the city, trying to figure it out. It had canals, but it was no Venice. It had gardens, but not nearly as numerous as before. I’d not been disappointed by Suzhou in so far as it had failed to live up to expectations. It was just that those expectations hadn’t exactly been trounced by wondrousness in the meantime.

Why do people go to Suzhou?

Posted on October 9, 2012 by strippedpixel / No comments

Why do people go to Suzhou? I wasn’t planning on going myself until I got talked into it whilst I was in Nanjing. “It’s beautiful,” I was told. “You can see the canals and … there are lots of gardens.” I was skeptical.

Suzhou bills itself as the “Venice of the East,” a moniker my guidebook had referred to as a “hackneyed … chat-up line” that I was unlikely to fall for. It is a town, it continues, that has “had to contend with destruction of its heritage and its replacement with largely arbitrary chunks of modern architecture.” Though Marco Polo, everybody’s favourite China traveller, described it as “a very great and noble city … contain[ing] merchants of great wealth and an incalculable number of people.” He may have been writing seven hundred years before this 11th edition of my Lonely Planet China was printed, but I still didn’t know who to believe.

Suzhou: Big Pants and public dancing

Posted on October 6, 2012 by strippedpixel / No comments

I arrived in Suzhou after a little over an hour’s ride on the high-speed rail from Nanjing. The weather had cooled from the previous week’s mid-30s sweatfest. A light breeze was blowing as I sat overlooking a small square next to the Waicheng River in the south-west of the city.

I was in another rich city of China’s central east coast. While the provincial capital Nanjing was busy transforming itself from aspiring player into 21st century metropolis alongside big brother Shanghai to the east, here in Suzhou, though still relatively small to be competing in the big leagues just yet, there was forward-thinking and an embracing of the economic good times evident all around.

Mid-Autumn Festival 2012: How was it for you?

Posted on October 4, 2012 by strippedpixel / No comments

So the best festival of the year (sorry Chinese New Year) has now been and gone. All those lanterns; all those lights. Tai Hang turned into a smoky vision of hell as the Fire Dragon wound around its streets. Victoria Park turned into a spectacle of burning candles, glowing ninjas, and … a massive yellow hedgehog thing. It was a rowdy, colourful and potentially flammable joy to behold.

Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance

Posted on October 3, 2012 by strippedpixel / No comments

Performed for well over 100 years in the Tai Hang area of Causeway Bay, the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance has grown from a village ritual into one of the most popular events of Hong Kong’s mid-autumn festival celebrations. It is hard to imagine when you visit the area now, but Tai Hang was once no more than a small Hakka village. Situated much closer to the waterfront than present day Tai Hang, the village was home to farmers and fishermen which, it is said, suffered first a typhoon and then a plague in the autumn of 1880.

China wouldn’t be China without …

Posted on September 28, 2012 by strippedpixel / 2 comment

Say cheese! It’s Chinese Domestic Tourism Day

Posted on September 25, 2012 by strippedpixel / No comments

Visit any major tourist site in China – or even any local point of interest for that matter – and you’ll likely witness it yourself. Maybe it’ll be the identical baseball caps you notice first, bobbing along in the collective safety of the sightseeing pack. Maybe it’ll be the tour buses you hear pulling up and emptying out next to some formerly tranquil beauty spot. Or maybe it’ll be the amplified screech of some half-frazzled, umbrella-wielding tour guide that lifts you from your scenic contemplation and dumps you right back down to earth in the crosshairs of the oncoming stampede.